Posts in the “zen” category

Years before I heard of Shinzen Young, I had always “enjoyed” practicing meditation in the cold. Some part of it probably goes back to childhood, when I had to wait for the schoolbus in the freezing cold of northern Illinois winters. (This was in the time before global warming.) I used to stand there without moving, and mentally I’d concentrate on not being cold, or at least not feeling the cold.

Many years later when I lived in Alaska, I used to enjoy going up into the mountains to basically inflict the same thing on myself. I always thought the “meditate deeply or suffer the consequences” approach forced me to meditate more deeply. This past winter that same “Do or die, there is not try” mentality forced me to maintain my focus and helped to combat my medically-induced lack of energy.

Just a quick note today that the “noting” and “witnessing” styles of meditation are basically the same.

When you practice noting, you note everything the body does as it’s doing it, so as the body does things you say walking, picking up, hearing, etc.

Similarly, when you practice witnessing...

This page contains a list of my favorite mindfulness quotes. Most of these are short, concise quotes that help bring me back to the present moment, and work well with my “Just Be” mobile app.

Update: I have replaced my Just Be application — which was written for Android only — with a new application I call Back To Now, which runs on both Android and iOS.

Background: Just Be

Just Be was a mobile mindfulness app that I created for Android users. This is what the reminders/notifications look like when you receive them on an Android phone or tablet:

“Proper meditation is so intense it doesn’t even allow thinking, ‘I am meditating.’”

~ Ramana Maharshi

“When I observe myself, I am really forced to admit that every day I am a prisoner of a thousand unsatisfied desires, or desires whose satisfaction brings me no permanent bliss.”

“So it seems that instead of endless running from one desire to another, it would be better to stop and examine the true nature of desire. If this investigation is successful, you will penetrate the nature of the true aim of all desire. What any desire really aims at is a state of non-desire.”

~ Jean Klein

I am a fan of some of the guided meditations in the Brightmind app. These are my adapted notes from the sixth and seventh meditations in the first “Core” group, by Shinzen Young:

Young Buddhist monks in flight training school. :)

(Sorry, I don’t remember the origin of this photo.)

“The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way, as if you were a beginner. Not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention, as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing. This is the way of practice, moment after moment.”

~ from the book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Apparently I have sleep apnea. But during the day. During meditation.

When I was meditating this morning my body stopped breathing several times for more than a minute and a half. At first I observed and wondered about it, but then I just let it be. The new normal.

~ July 6, 2021

This Ram Dass definition of the word “namaste” is really wonderful:

I honor the place in you
Where the entire universe resides.
I honor the place in you
Of love, of light, of truth, of peace.

I honor the place in you
Where if you are in that place in you and
I am in that place in me,
There is only one of us.

This namaste definition comes from the excellent Ram Dass book, Polishing the Mirror.

Namaste. :)

“The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”

~ An old Zen poem from Li Bo (Li Po, Li Bai)

For many years I struggled with how to combine two of my main interests, Zen and work. I had read that the Zen mind is the mind before thinking, so it seems like Zen and work must be totally unrelated, because you need your mind to work. And then over time I came to understand phrases like, when working, just work; in computer parlance, become single-threaded.

This article contains a collection of quotes that have been helpful to me in understanding the relationship between Zen and work. Please note that I don’t wrap each quote in double quotes, and I also try to attribute each quote to the correct author/speaker. If you’re interested in how to combine Zen and work, I hope you’ll find them helpful.

This is an A.I “monochrome ink drawing” based on the Shunryu Suzuki quote, “Don’t expect the next moment.”

Someone asked Zen Master Seung Sahn, “What do you think about the beginning of this world?”

“The beginning of this world came from your mouth. Ha ha ha ha! Do you understand?”

The student was silent.

“Then I will explain: What is this world? You must understand that point first. You make time, space, cause and effect. In three seconds, when you asked that question, you made this whole world. Physics used to teach that time and space, and cause and effect, are absolutes. But modern physics teaches that time, space, and cause and effect are subjective. So you make this whole world, and you make your time and space.”

(quote from lionsroar.com)

Maybe because of my Back To Now app, I really like this quote about remembering from Ram Dass:

“I think that remembering is the strategy that most religions are designed to do. It’s remembering there are other planes of consciousness, it’s remembering the illusory nature. It’s remembering Maya, it’s remembering Dukkha. It’s remembering the karma, the sangha, the Buddha, it’s remembering that you’re not caught on one plane of consciousness. It’s reminding you to wake up. The device is to wake you up.”

That quote comes from this ramdass.org page.

A great Zen quote from Zen Master Seung Sahn: “If you want Satori, Satori is far, far away.”

(Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term that means enlightenment, awakening, liberation, or self-realization.)

After finishing the book, I Am That, by Nisargadatta Maharaj, I have collected many of this quotes related to enlightenment. Note that he never uses the word “enlightenment,” but instead at least occasionally uses the word “gnani,” which is defined in the glossary as “the knower,” or one who understands “the realization of the unity of all things.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj enlightenment quotes

To get the ball rolling, here are some descriptions of enlightenment from Nisargadatta Maharaj:

I’ve been researching the work of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and per my research and a couple of AI tools, I believe that he gave very practical guidance for using “I am” types of mantras in different situations. Here’s how he suggested using these practices:

During physical sensations/pain

For example, during times when you have pain:

• When you feel pain or physical discomfort, first acknowledge it’s there
• Then remind yourself “I am not this body feeling pain”
• Ask “What am I who is aware of this pain?”
• Notice that you are the awareness in which pain appears, not the pain itself

“The riddle of life gets solved by following my promise, ‘your form is God’, and by living by these words:

I am not the body. I am formless, pure, and spotless. I am formless, unblemished. I have no birth and death. My light is so bright it outshines the clarity of the Moon and the Sun. How holy and pure we are as Atma ... All objects are animated by the light of the Self. Self is formless and luminous, clearer and purer than any light.

I assure you, again, your consciousness is manifest, Brahman; it is God Hari. Its expressions are many, yet it is ultimately formless. Many have to try to express it with words, yet it is beyond description. What is prior to the sense of being? It is pure Being without the sense of being. It is the eternal existence without beingness. It is untinged, stainless, Parabrahman. The Supreme Absolute.”

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am Not The Body, pp. 110-111

“The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost.”

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am Not The Body